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Agents of Ideological Hegemony: How the Real Common Core Shifts Us to State Capitalism

A state capitalist society may sound off-putting but it is the proper term for what we are living through now. Education is an essential component because of the need for a ‘consensus’ ideology among the broad population that comes to see the desired ends and policies of the politically-connected and public sector class as consistent with their own beliefs. Or necessary to avoid economic or environmental disaster. Even if those To-Now-Be-Desired beliefs have had to be heavily propagandized by the schools and the media.

When the “politicizing of economic relationships” emerges as the dominant decision-making power in an economy, state capitalism is actually the proper term. Since your mayor or Governor or Congressman is unlikely to speak in those terms, we all have to learn to recognize that such politicizing is precisely what is going on with the calls to no longer distinguish between the public and private sector or for “partnerships between government, companies and universities” to quit thinking in terms of silos and working together to “drive innovation and entrepreneurship in [insert the major city closest to you].”

That was the spirit of that Dalian, China conference discussed in the last post. It was the underlying mindset of a program I attended last week sponsored by the world’s most famous search engine on “Georgia’s Digital Economy” that probably will have a variant coming to your state. Where access to the sovereign powers is what counts for future prosperity. The last quote above is from the program materials for my next field trip. And the needed radical changes to education, K-12 and higher ed, are essential components of all these pushes.

We have had a mixed economy for a while in the US, with the resulting stagnation and distortions and favoritism (on who gets bailed out of bad decisions or a waiver from a mandate like Obamacare) that interventionism always brings. But each of these new programs are symptomatic of a wholesale sought ideological shift to finally obtain the needed prevailing mindset. As John T. Flynn noted when he compared New Deal economic policies to fascist policies in Europe, we are now looking at a consistent and coordinated drumbeat across governments at all levels that they get to be the ultimate decision-maker in allocation decisions. Flynn’s precise and apt description for what is coming at us, quickly and methodically, is government–local, regional, state, and federal–who intend now to “insert itself in the structure of business, not merely as a policeman, but as partner, collaborator and banker.”

There is a name for this as it has been tried before–Zwangswirtschaft was Ludwig Von Mises’ term from his experiences in Europe. Others have astutely called it “authority capitalism.” But whatever it is called, there is no mass prosperity involved. I am going to quote here something that Murray Rothbard recognized back in 1977 and we all need to know to see the tragedy inherent in this sought pathway:

“In fact, it is the state that is robbing all classes…it is the state that is the common enemy of mankind. And who is the state? It is any group who manages to seize control of the state’s coercive machinery of theft and privilege. Of course these ruling groups have differed in composition through history, from kings and nobles to privileged merchants to Communist parties to the Trilateral Commission. [Today we might add the Davos and Dalian invitees]. But whoever they are, they can only be a small minority of the population, ruling and robbing the rest of us for their power and wealth. And since they are a small minority, the state rulers can only be kept in power by deluding us about the wisdom or necessity of their rule.” http://mises.org/daily/6537/Who-Are-the-Champions-of-the-Common-Man

And centralizing control over the messages being delivered via education and making it psychological and visual in focus using gaming and virtual reality is, oh so useful, in perpetuating the needed delusion. The level of interventionism being sought in our society and economy requires comprehensive planning. And that “presupposes complete unity with regard to a scale of priorities” which again implicates schools and the media. I am quoting here from a June 1975 paper called “From Laissez-Faire to Zwangswirtschaft: The Dynamics of Interventionism” by John Hagel, III and Walter Grinder. They say the only way out of this destructive trajectory is for people to come to recognize just how destructive this pathway is. I am doing my best with this blog and particular post to do just that.

A transformative, uniformity imposing, vehicle of standardizing values, attitudes, desired beliefs, and feelings via education during the years when the human personality is most malleable is necessary for this mass shift. Grinder and Hagel (citing Hayek and his 1944 The Road to Serfdom) note that “since comprehensive planning requires ‘general acceptance of a common Weltanschauung [Worldview or Mindset is the common 2013 term], of a definite set of values,’ the transition to a system of Zwangswirtschaft is accompanied by increasing efforts to assert ideological hegemony over the social system and thereby mobilize support for the planning priorities selected within the state apparatus. As a consequence, ideological purity becomes a prominent concern and the educational system in particular is progressively integrated into the overarching system subjected to …management. Just as the market place of goods has been progressively subjected to controls [the essence of the needs, cooperative commonwealth economy we have encountered and discussed under a variety of names], so must the market place of ideas submit to the dictates of the state as ‘wrong’ ideas are perceived as a potentially disruptive element within the system.”

And that real aim is why fathers in Maryland are being arrested now for trying to speak out against the Common Core at a school board meeting. It’s why high-achieving Fulton County in Georgia needed a conversion charter that actually commits it to gut academics with no effective recourse by parents, taxpayers, or students and why the charter is being touted as a model for other suburban districts. It’s why elected school boards are being increasingly stripped of authority by the accreditation agencies who rarely advertise that they see their positions as using their lucrative government-provided monopoly positions to invisibly advance cultural change towards this very Zwangswirtschaft vision.

All of this matters so much because state-directed economies are enormously wasteful in addition to the lack of genuine individual freedom. In a different paper linked to by Rockwell above, they point out that the “political means alone is unproductive and parasitic” and it needs a private sector of labor and exchange to survive but planning and intervention, once started, create dislocations that led to more interventions, which leads to more economic stagnancy and unemployment. Which leads to more political demands to do something. Precisely where the US finds itself in 2013 after that 2008 crony financial bailout and a Stimulus Act in 2009 that could best be described as “friends, family, and large supporters” on who was helped. Not to mention what is going on in healthcare.

I have to get ready to take good notes at another confab of what is being billed as “the elite” assembling to learn why and how to push this vision. With no mention so far of the attached poison that comes with it. The term in the title “agents of ideological hegemony” is the precise term used repeatedly of what it takes to get this vision in place and I will be listening to see whether I am hearing from a knowing, duplicitous agent or a naive, inadvertent one.

I strongly suggest using the same tactic whenever you hear a pitch for the Common Core or PISA or 21st Century Learning and other education reforms. It really does describe what Marina Gorbis is actually up to in education or Peter Senge. And so many others who are being marketed by school districts and politicians as authorities to trust and defer to.

Remember always where this vehicle intends to go. And that economic stagnancy or collapse is the inevitable result, whatever the PR hype.

“…. As Mr. Bush said this week, “The fight about Common Core is political. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we have huge swaths of the next generation of Americans that can’t calculate math. They can’t read. Their expectations in their own lives are way too low. …”

That’s a bit of word salad.

1. The math standards are not all bad. At least they are higher than the old standards. American students are terrible at math. Maybe common core will make things even worse, I don’t know, but things are not so great now. I think they are using the math standards to sell the other ones. I saw in one document where it said they considered math generally compliant already because it dealt with real world things.

But they’re forcing projects into the curriculum. My 7th grader’s math teacher says they’re going to have projects this year but she has no idea what they will be. She obviously doesn’t see a need for them, nor do I.

2. The reading may get even worse. But honestly our reading instruction was screwed up already with look-say and so on. They made it easy to cart out the old system by ruining it first.

3. Expectations! That must be where the social activism stuff comes in. Advocating for social change. Jeb is not a very good Republican if he’s telling people to put their expectations ahead of their achievements.

The fact that tthe Catholic Diocese all over the country have been herded towards this by hook or by crook with various consultants and partnerships, p21, ICEL, NCEA…pushing common core as Excellence and lifelong learning among other black hole slogans for several years prior to the big rttt secular push. It is the distractions of overscheduling and entertainment that keep parents distracted enough to not question the strange and unCatholic changes that have have been slowly implemented. They just trust the Church, that it is not fathomable that any church leader would be out to harm their kids and destroy the church, from within. As we saw with the man arrested in Maryland, well the room should have erupted with parental supporters but instead the shellshocked public let him be taken away. Fear disbeleif and self preservation kick in.
Shades of German towns in the not too distant past.
Who was it that said ” if you act like you have power soon they will give it to you”… Who said that!

And to think Jeb is still insisting that only the ignorant or those against high academic standards would object to the Common Core. Only the misinformed or the deliberately duplicitous can continue to insist this is about making academics strong and consistent from state to state. And the best way for someone to prove the latter is to bother to look at the mounds of evidence about the real implementation being mandated for schools and classrooms in the name of the Common Core.”

As I watched again the school district event in Towson, from last Thursday (correct me if I’m wrong) it looked like Dr. Lillian Lowery, MD State Superintendent of Schools, was one of the 3 people behind the microphone. Imagine that kind of bullying taking place right under the watchful eye of the state superintendent and yet she remains silent. No high moral ground there—or any moral leadership.

This article http://frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/challenge-common-core-at-your-own-peril/ says Small was held until 3 AM but that with all this publicity charges have now been dropped. When there was a loaded gun brought into a local middle school with a diverse population recently,at first the admins under the magic district conversion charter that relieves all responsibility to taxpayers refused to meet. Then after parents went to the media, there was a public meeting but again questions had to be in writing and only those they wanted to answer were touched. No questions of taxpayer paid officials in person despite lives having been put at risk by policies not followed. Then parents went to media again and then super showed up for questions in person but with a large contingent of his male executive staff to bolster him and announced affirmatively in his first comments that truth was always the policy and there had been no need to go to the media.

There is a widespread belief among educational admins at the district and state level that this time this cultural and political coup via education will not be stopped. That link also talks about the data mining component I am concerned with but he misses how much psychological data will be collected just from the gaming focus plus the adaptive software collecting info on strategies when dealing with untaught, unclear, no right answer ‘real world’ problems.

The Common Core is merely the means to make an academic focus go away and be replaced by a Curriculum of Affect. With data being constantly gathered to see how the makeover is proceeding on each student. It is legally indefensible so we get all these strong arm tactics to protect public officials from having to justify what they cannot. And siphoning off taxpayer funds like pigs at the trough all the while. Multiple pensions. Lucrative consulting contracts for the compliant. Education in the US has become a license for larceny from the public trough with the kids just being the excuse for payment. Just as long as kids are being reliably remade noetically over time so they will vote for a certain transformational vision in the future in a government-directed economy that is supposed to magically create jobs in the inevitable economic stagnancy that results when political connections, not voluntary choices by consumers, determine who gets what.

Interesting, the article repeatedly mentioned Dallas Dance (the Baltimore County Superintendent) but only the Malkin article mentioned the presence of the MD State Superintendent, Lillian Lowery—so she was present! To think of all the lip service they pay to so-called “stakeholders.” They should all be fired for their lack of respect for the concerns of their “stakeholders” (their term, not mine). What a farce!

They use the term stakeholders to give someone other than the individual involved or the owner of the property being imposed upon a say. It’s the ramp up to communitarianism where the majority controls all and everyone ‘involved’ or implicated is to have a say. It’s part of the breakdown of the distinction between public and private that is actually about authorizing the politically connected to loot and control under regulatory authority or some sort of planning entity or that Fulton school charter. When someone famously and lucratively committed to the Marxist theory of the mind refers to that particular document as “clearly embodying a theory of change in education” and “it’s quite a nice one,” you have the kind of confirmation I have been looking for as to what is really going on.

My 2 days of extensive notetaking and being in the room of open declarations on Sunday and MOnday have borne the kind of linkages we wanted. Especially when followed up by looking into that TED 2.0 City conference in NYC last Friday and then the Promise Zones announced by the feds in August. Plus did you know President Obama announced a posthumous Medal of Freedom for Bayard Rustin in August as well? I guess to confirm that the federal purse is finally achieving that vision he laid out in 1965 and we explored a couple of months ago.

In that government-led, other institutions cooperate, vision, appointed stakeholders decide and bind everyone.

I never liked the sound of that word, stakeholder, but it was one they started using in this area around the time they started pushing something called “Baldrigde” in the schools. I thought, stakeholder?—you mean, like, people?

BO—what an _____________ ____________. I wouldn’t be surprised if he were to appoint Mumia Abu-Jamal as his next Attorney General.

After I found this I realized at the bottom it is tied to the same group that put on that Dalian, China conference.

Ding, Ding. We have a winner between what I am going to say next and the last 2 posts. Basically collaborative leadership is the theory that fits with a Marxist Humanist, communitarian orientation where there is no longer an individual decision focus. As a Powerpoint I also found a few minutes ago put it:”

Is collaborative leadership different from other forms of leadership?

–‘Who decides’ shifts from one to many
–Achieves diverse outcomes not easily measured
–Mirrors the social complexity of public sector improvements

It makes the focus “our goal’ and the will of the majority and fits with this desired administered, state-directed economy and society.

Precisely what I heard over and over Sunday and Monday even if it had lovelier PR terms masking that reality. Ultimately that was and is the vision of the future. Exploitation via the public sector using the mythos of ending all oppression. Not if mind arson and personality and behavior manipulation is an essential component. Which it is.

I first saw it used in corporate finance in the 1980’s. The old rule was that the shareholders owned the corporation so they got to make all the decisions, though they would usually delegate most of them to a “board of directors” and hired “management”.

But then in place of shareholders (the people who owned common shares) we had “stakeholders” who included all sorts of other supposedly worthy people like management itself, employees, the local community, government, environmentalists and on and on. All those others got to push against the shareholders when decisions were made. I think it may have started with Harvard’s Michael Porter, who was a superstar corporate finance prof. around then. He’s still kicking around, here’s a new thing from him in the same vein: http://hbr.org/2011/01/the-big-idea-creating-shared-value

I’ll check it out. I just find it hypocritical that on the one hand, as part of the new teacher evaluation system, “parental engagement” is one of the criteria on which teachers are evaluated. Yet, on the other hand, State Superintendent Lillian Lowrey and Balt. Co. School Superintendent, Dallas Dance—their concept of “engagement” is having the parents dragged out and shut up. That’s really setting the bar low for teachers and administrators in Maryland. Talk about no class.

That is one of the problems I am seeing. You have School Governance Councils as supposedly the central purpose of the charter, for example. Yet the school district is paying a former employee and parent, $2500 a day (she has a Masters in social work), to do the SGC training and she essentially teaches the members how limited their authority is.

It’s the illusion of greater recourse when in actuality there is even less. But parental engagement sounds better and they do talk about wanting to educate parents as well.

It’s like something else I saw recently, a poster that teachers were supposed to put up their ideas on “how to improve the decision-making process” (or something to that effect). I felt like saying, ‘how about everyone has complete autonomy over their own decisions.’ It’s a complete sham.

Also, that Master Teacher stuff I read about in one of your links—that I’ve got to see in practice. Likely just a bunch of
b———-kissing wanna-be administrators who are tired of teaching and have a lust for control. ———And in conformity with the World Economic Forum graphic in your last post—No Talent Required.

That 1962 book on Perceiving, Being. and Becoming talks a great deal about a focus on decision-making. So does the Ford work on humanistic education. Then it shows up again in David Conley’s 2007 work for the Gates Foundation on what constitutes College readiness. It’s why I have said you can link the humanistic psych work to what lurks now as 21st century skills. Yet another thing hyped as part of the transformation, especially by the President of the US Council on Competitiveness. People were being primed to repeat what has been intended all along as part of this dirigiste, no distinction between public and private push.

They kept mentioning nurturing talent Sunday and I kept thinking of your comment that morning and the fact that it’s all sound bytes designed to rally support.

That’s really sickening. “New normal.” And what’s the deal with everybody quoting Einstein? And (often) Churchill? It’s become cliché. As if either would be in agreement with their arguments. I only had a chance to scan the articles. In figure 1 of the document from Duke what caught my eye was in the “institutional design” it speaks of “clear ground rules.” I suppose that means it is not a “free speech zone.” Why would anyone with an intelligent or innovative thought want to contribute to that type of structure?

On another note, I am reading Andrew Napolitano’s book “Theodore and Woodrow” and there is a great chapter on progressive influences in education. I’m sure you’ve read it. What really blew me away was towards the end of the book he mentioned that the US, each year, pays for 25% of the UN’s budget, and that we’ve been doing so since the 1940’s. That is insane! You mean we’re paying 25% of Irina Bokova’s salary? I need a drink(s,s,s). We’re in big, big trouble. Sorry to stray off topic.

I had already mentioned this as it is what many urban mayors are also pushing. All these ed reforms are within the context and a means to this greatly reimagined economy and society which unabashedly has a required collective focus.

I also watched some more of the videos from TED City 2.0 from last Friday’s get together in NYC.

What a document! Thanks for keeping us aware of these plans. I think if students (even children) understood how much of their parents’ hard work was confiscated by federal income tax we might be able to begin to acquaint them with a truth that even a child can understand. How about repealing the 16th Amendment and trying that economy on for size? True people have always been charitable. It would be nice if the EPA, IRS, U.S. Department of Ed, the U.N., and all of the other superfluous government agencies that exist with money pilfered from American taxpayers get together in a commune, enjoy their new found unemployment, and create their own sharing society—and put a fence around it. I’d like to keep all of what I earn, and share it with whomever I choose, whenever I choose.

Thanks for the bio on Hilda Taba. I read elsewhere that in the late 1950’s the CA State Senate found that her methods were harmful to children. Do you know where I can find records of these proceedings? Like a transcript, or summary of the hearings?

Today I was thinking about this new economy the World Economic Forum is looking forward to, and then heard Rush talking about the latest IPCC report and the global warming hoax. He observed, “We live in an era where nothing is real, except the ‘nothing.’ The real ‘nothing’ is what is passed off as real. And what is real is mocked, and laughed at, made fun of, and discarded.”

It’s really frightening and sad to see how deeply people are invested in all manner of nothingness. The frogs and crickets are far more sensible and believable.

What is decidedly real is the desire for power. The belief that past wrongs or theories can now be asserted as a means of mandating that only a Marxist Humanist approach to society and the economy administered by government officials at all levels can satisfy the grievances our institutions have nutured. And intend now to nurture in earnest.

Yesterday (Friday news dump to avoid publicity) the federal DoEd and the Justice Departments issued a joint letter to all colleges and universities completely misrepresenting the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Fisher affirmative action case. http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/dcl-qa-201309.pdf is the link to the Q & A declaring that Diversity is a compelling state interest even though SCOTUS has not. The transformationists need that to become the accepted belief so that a non-quota world becomes legally suspect instead of the other way around.

Instead of post-racial, this is race and ethnicity and gender as primary attributes of citizens, students, and employees. Just as with the federal civil rights and disabilities laws the statutes, regulations, and case law are being deliberately misread to ultimately get the desired results and outcomes. It’s the antithesis of the rule of law because who you are matters acutely to the result. It’s the opposite of blind justice.

That’s amazing. Those folks are obsessed with race and the power to personally pick winners and losers. Remember Al Pacino in his speech at the end of Scent of a Woman? It’s a great scene—but today he would be dragged away and labeled a lunatic.

We are shifting back to the historical norm where those with political power also control people and economic resources. Unfortunately there was no mass prosperity in that previous norm that parts of the world, for a couple of hundred years out of human history, were able to break away from.

Incentives matter to what s made available and in this authority capitalism vision dominated by governments, there is no certainty. Just political power. Anytime historically you shift from the rules being certain but the outcomes not to trying to equalize outcomes economies become stagnant. Good for those at the table of power but no one else.

Low class indeed. In my professional life I have become accustomed to debating or discussing things with some degree of decorum and indirection when it comes to personal matters. Even in acrimonious or contentious situations, one should assume reasonableness and intelligence in the other people. We all know this.

All that goes out the window. When I have to argue things with school employees, I have to use a sledgehammer. It’s like they are a less evolved form of life. And they lie with impunity. There’s no decency, no morality. It’s just pushing via blunt instruments. Any discretion is taken as weakness or perhaps simply not understood.

I’ll take this opportunity to vent about my 7th grader’s new social studies teacher. Social studies seems to be filled with social engineers, and their job is to screw up my son. So it’s a fight every year. Maybe it’ll be better in 9th grade “history”.

She starts out on the first class day of the year by making everyone add a positive adjective to their name. Her adjective is “fabulous”. It was all pretty stupid. Nobody uses those adjectives any more.

We had a meeting today where she accused my son of poking the sub repeatedly in class. There was no sub in class today, and he never poked anyone like she said. She just made it up to have something to complain about at the meeting. It seems these teachers can lie without sanction. I”m going to pin her down on this one.

She sent some lame journal home that my son has to write his “reflections” in, and I have to add a parent comment. She told the students that if their parents did not add a comment, they (the student) would get a lunch detention.

She appears like a normal person on the surface, but she is a wacked out nutcase.

With respect to your son, by the age of 10, a bright child is noticeably brighter than an average adult and many average adults deeply resent that fact. This social change/psychological emphasis just enhances the weapons that can be used to register their ire.

One of the things I noticed was the graphics associated with the (co)lab were designed to reflect nodes in a network where everyone is always joined to others. It looked just like the graphic on the cover of Marina Gorbis’ book I wrote about called The Nature of the Future: Dispatches from the Socialstructed World.

Notice the concept seeks to discount the individual again and lay out “new ways of behaving and dealing with each other.” It says there “will need to be a commitment to the whole.”

Finally, everyone is to be consulted even if it’s not their money at risk and they are pretty lousy in their contributions–“there will need to be an understanding that all members of the network have the right to have an equal say in the decisions of the network including those with limited resources and capabilities.”

You push the idea that this is the new means of solving the global challenges of the 21st century. Of course that was also the rationale Moises Naim used to insist we are now to be the Governed and must turn over decision-making power to a much bolstered public sector. Notice this fits with Peter Senge’s vision of the new workplace of the future that goes along with his systems thinking push on the schools. That was in his The Fifth Discipline Handbook.

I love how you distinguished between a “knowing, duplicitous agent or a naive, inadvertent one.” As I saw the smiles on the Baltimore County School District officials faces in the video from last Thursday I was wondering the same thing.

Also, schools often talk about ‘bullying.’ One glance at the video and we can see who the bullies really are.

Lastly, at the beginning of this school year, in a local school system, the principals gave teachers a doubled-sided document entitled “10 things parents should know about the Common Core.” This is so that teachers can argue in defense of the Common Core based on these 10 points. I think it’s funny that the bureaucrats have to enlist teachers to defend something they (bureaucrats) designed.

“Capitalism is an economic system in which capital assets are privately owned and goods and services are produced for profit in a market economy. In a capitalist economy, the parties to a transaction nominally determine the prices at which assets, goods, and services are exchanged.”

So, when the state intervenes, it chooses who benefits from the “partnerships” and at what price/cost to taxpayers (in terms of money and freedom). From my experience, the state does so without reference to capitalism, as government bureaucrats and politicians selectively reward cronies and pays back for various favors and alliances over the years to individuals, foundations and corporations.

Robin, I so appreciate all you are doing and have shared your page with many, many people. My problem, along with a few others, is how difficult is can be to understand exactly what is being said. The concepts are confusing and though some info can be understood, it’s very difficult to put together, especially to explain to someone else. I feel pretty dumb in needing to bring this up but I’ve gotten messages from others who are having the same problem I am. Please, any advice would be appreciated since this is so darn important and we really do want to be a part of the fight against this. Thanks!

Robin can explain 1000 times better, and via her blog I’ve gotten introduced to the whole issue not just one aspect of it. I started out here as a deer-in-the-headlights newbie and now I’m not so newbie but since this is already affecting my 7th grader, the deer-in-the-headlights feeling remains.

But I’d say that her clearest contribution to this line of inquiry is to apply the principle from (iirc) Watergate “follow the money”.

Please just ask me whatever is confusing. I cannot make every piece freestanding or keep linking back to previous posts. That’s much easier to do in a comment. If you or anyone else asks me I can virtually always come up with a link or illustrating metaphor. Often times I am writing about something that just came on my radar screen. I react to the actual implementation.

I promise to keep at it until it is not confusing but a have a broad spectrum of readers on the blog with a variety of backgrounds. The comments are the forum to say, please explain what you mean or why you said it this way.

As I said before Robin, the work you are doing is awesome! I guess it’s just a matter of you being very, very bright so you present things in a way other very, very bright people can understand………or in a way your mind would formulate things naturally. I can only wish I had that type of brain! All of this can be so hard to follow and understand. Please forget I mentioned it.

I do not want to forget it because whatever is the missing piece for you is applicable to others as well. You are right. I know this story too well sometimes. Please let me know what you would like me to explain better or provide more detail on.

I just got done with Day 2 of the Program I mentioned and am even more concerned by some of what I heard.

Thanks Robin. I think it’s probably a matter of psychology concepts, terms and such that most of us are not familiar with so it can be so confusing to understand what all is going on. AND, they seem to like double speak or obfuscation so a simple or screwy idea is made to sound complex. So hard to follow and then convey to others. A quick, easy synopsis would help so much. Or, maybe a page with a synopsis in laymans terms. Thanks so much for hearing me out. Dang I admire you! Sincerely, Carol

Oh it absolutely is doublespeak and deliberate obfuscation. One of my favorite words and so apt here. Basically if you can get people to respond from emotion as a reflex or from perceptions and beliefs deliberately fostered via education and use education to shape and redo values attitudes and beliefs, you can predictably control future behavior because very little is a conscious decision and the unconscious prompters to action have been messed with.

You keep the rational mind unstocked as much as possible and not practiced at being the driver of conduct. And you can guide people to put others first and act as part of the collective and not mind it. Maslow is taping into the same end goals via humanist psychology as the Marxist Humanist want. They want the wealth created in the West and they want to control economic activity going forward for the most part. And divvy up power and taxpayer money to public sector, research universities doing as they are told to the students, and to compliant Big Business (who wants to keep their current seat at the table and be saved by regulators and special contracts from becoming the next Kodak or Worldcomm or DEC).

We have a political coup going on and a desire to impose psychological theories to try to remake personalities via the schools. Because the entities who control what goes on in the schools and classrooms are dictating the psych model under the Positive School Climate exec order and social emotional learning mandates for all coming in under federal disabilities law misreadings and other tactics, the actual implementation is different from hype, Which makes it hard to complain in time.

They are controlling this through the Federal Disabilities act too? No wonder it’s difficult to know what is going on and how to fight it. The tentacles are EVERYWHERE! Yes that did help but I’ve got to tell you, I read slowly and went back over and over to make sure I understood. I’m telling you Robin, most people won’t or can’t take the time. This is so much to understand and digest! Thanks! Carol

Important as I was just listening to last Friday’s TED 2.0 conference on the future of cities and the Just City and how the Ford Foundation was financing this vision. HUD Secretary Shaun Donavan gave a speech and said this fall 11 federal agencies will be coordinating together to pilot a new vision for US society to be launched in 20 Promise Zones. Foundations working with local governments and private businesses and all those federal agencies and then pronouncing it as a locally led effort. Department of Ed is one of the 11. No wonder people looked nervous Sunday night when I asked a question about the relationship of a certain initiative to Promise Neighborhoods. The answer was Not Yet.

But apparently soon. And I took another odd comment on Sunday and it led me earlier this morning to WEB DuBois and his Marxist vision for society. That racism would continue as long as capitalism existed. And then I checked to see if there was a relationship between DuBois and Bayard Rustin’s 1965 vision to March through the Institutions, which is certainly what all this looks like. I discovered DuBois had been a guest in Rustin’s home when he was a child.

The vision really is coming into hard focus so I will just keep answering questions until enough people are aware of this impending tragedy. That only wide awareness can stop.

Robin, exactly what I was following about a year or two ago. I stumbled onto some progressive group that was doing what it could to change local laws, which then led me to the website CEO’s for cities. When you look at players and funding, you find lots of connections and can see the web being weaved. Everything is being put into place so when the hammer comes down, no one is going to know what hit them or how it happend. We are sooooo late in the game! Thank you so, so very much for the education you give. Can’t tell you how much I value it. In my next life maybe I’ll have a brain as sharp as yours! Thanks, Carol

I follow Living Cities and Brookings’ Metropolitanism work and went to hear Bruce Katz speak last fall precisely because i knew how it fit. A politically well-connected businessman was at my table and asked why I was there. I told him about the vision I had pieced together. He laughed and said “You are right but it shouldn’t matter to you if you can put this all together. You will be fine.”

I told him I didn’t think the country would be fine nor would my kid’s generation have continued prosperity. So I keep researching and writing.

Before we go out to do “good”, we should be sure there are benefits to the cause. We need some assurance our mission will produce meaningful results.

I am reminded of the numerous charities that go begging for resources, yet we find they are either lost causes or just make-work projects for “do-gooders”.

Thus, I understand the earnestness behind the request to want a clearer outline of the education problem and what steps might be fruitful in challenging it.

I am also reminded of the saying — “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” Being involved with the early stages of the home education movement in the 70s I know that a powerful, self-fuelling, self-propelling and self-fulfilling grass-roots movement can be sparked just by a proper rationale and a little ignition.

Firstly, this education problem we are dealing with here is long-standing. Many decades of embedding has transpired.

Secondly, the means used have largely been covert, coercive and contrived. The methods used rely on sophisticated psychological mass persuasion techniques following the 100 year agenda of Fabian Socialism — Educate, Agitate, Organize.

This website has uncovered the interlocking connections with other totalitarian agendas internationally. With much thanks to the due diligence and sleuthing abilities of Robin.

With so many books and efforts right now pulling in so many disparate directions it would be a blessed relief to see an incisive book that cuts through the babel — the confusing noise.

So, I think it’s a fair question to ask — Where along the way is “the book”? The website discloses much hitherto unknown information. Rather scary stuff. The sooner this is exposed to the sunlight the better.

Our rescue efforts can be better mobilized to help our children, our grandchildren and our society.

And those who conveniently allow the “wool to be pulled over their eyes” will be given notice of their negligence.

Can we have some previews, table of contents, chapter summaries? Hope this project is not too tied up with red tape!

Two current books do more harm than good. Ravitch’s book simply incites more hatred than direction. And Ron Paul’s book is blithely oblivious of the totalitarian fix that endangers masses of populations. His exit strategy will assist only a few, leaving the rest to the central planners who seek to “norm” us to their particular view of a good citizen.

The footnotes are finished and nicely laid out and I have duly said hello again to all the cited books and docs. I am using Createspace since like the little red hen I have sowed the grain, harvested, made the bread, etc.

I am dealing with experienced people to help me and several of my Beta readers have had life get in the way. A bit slower than I had hoped.

Chapter 1 explains several people in the last 200 years who have seen ed as a political weapon and how that is leading to the actual CC implementation. Chapter 2 takes on the reading wars and explains the intention not to teach reading and why. Chapter 3 deals with math and science wars and how it relates to what is coming.

Chapter 4 deals with Competency because so much nefarious is being hidden in that word. Having laid a foundation of the underlying ideas with anecdotes and explantions I take on what really happened and when and why to higher ed and the colleges of ed.

Then in Chapter 6 I start in the 60s and have mindblowing never discussed work on what was really sought and how it relates to now. In many more areas than education.

Chapter 7 lays out quite a few known ways the reall CC is different from the sals pitch in ways no taxpayer will be OK with.

The conclusion takes on why this model destroys future prosperity using quotes from some very prescient minds.

You will understand why ed makes such a good weapon and never again can we be played like we have been for decades.

I concentrate on US but the template and goals are comparable globally.

And I explain how all this is demonstrably grounded in the Cold War and a way to carry on the conflict less visibly but still effectively it was hope using quotes from people in positions of authority admitting that.

Congratulations woman, you’re almost home! Your sacrifice will be worth it, very much to us and our families and, depending on how many people you can awaken with your alarm, to millions of others. You have already changed my life and those of my son and my grandkids. God speed, Robin.

I received two texts today from men who love me and know my passion regarding the atrocity we call Common Core. My late hubby’s brother, Rex, parent of two wonderful IB grads and a staunch conservative freedom lover,
and my baby girl’s hubby, Wayne, growing more conservative by the day as he sees what this admin is doing for families like his (5 kids and stopping). We won’t mention who he voted for, he regrets it and he was only 29.
They both texted me about Gov. Rick Scott’s turnaround on PARCC testing. He stopped the gravy train. It’s a start. I am grateful. Now let’s see if he makes good on his promises to make the new assessments Florida centric and get input on improving the CC math and LA standards. He’s a politician so I won’t hold my breath, but the forward movement of the CCSS in FL has slowed.

I could write a charter that gives parents and students choice but so many I have read take it away. They are sitting there line booby traps waiting to be used to make the Affect emphasis binding whatever the dispute.

I have seen Chester on enough Michael Barber projects not to be surprised.

Robin: You statement: “Yes, I am cleaning off my desk separating what needs to be filed vs trash now.”

EEK! Don’t Trash! Archive

Upon finishing a book — especially one of historical interest in a fast-paced scenario — the sequel is often indicated.

Robin: I would urge a pause on the tossing, unless duplications.

Especially in the field of “manufactured cultural transformation” things are changing so quickly and profoundly as to be staggering.

Example: I’ve been following how narratives keep changing, especially in politics and literature studies. I’m especially interested in how Marxism became so embedded in our education institutions and how it is actually accelerating. Why accelerating? Because no one is actually stopping or stalling this juggernaut — this crushing force.

In today’s paper concerning Merkel’s re-election in Germany I read this interesting observation about politics and the steady growth of the welfare state. This is what Timothy Garton Ash of the Hoover Institution (Stanford) wrote:

*** “After all, in Aesop’s fable, it was as much the hare that lost, as it was the tortoise that won.” ***

I am following the narrative changes of over 30 years of this University textbook — A Handbook Of Critical Approaches To Literature. So far there are 6 editions and I’m awaiting the 6th. The 5th (2005) has this significant addition to the Cultural Studies chapter.

Henry Giroux, a critical pedagogy theorist, is quoted for the first time in this text’s periodic updating. Giroux says literature is to be viewed politically and teachers are to see themselves as “emancipatory”, “resisting intellectuals”. Giroux sees the professor as making his own political views part of the instruction, so that the study becomes “an engaged rather than a detached activity.” (!)

Back to this Invisible Serf’s Collar project. By being the lazy hare we are allowing ourselves to be taken over — minds and hearts and everything in between. Psychological warfare is something about which the average person is blissfully ignorant. The 12 labors of Hercules are physical, easy concrete tasks compared to the psychological hidden challenges/labors ahead.

Not remembering if I brought this forward before so I will repeat this quote from John Holt, an early pioneer in the home education movement (70s) who was concerned about tendencies in the education system toward totalitarianism and fascism:

*** “Today freedom has different enemies. It must be fought for in different ways. It will take very different qualities of mind and heart to save it.”

Robin: Keep your material for a sequel to update the shifting strategies as they emerge. Looking forward to your book.

I have files for the book that were not cited, those that were, files from researching blog, notebooks, I am truly swimming in info. Well documented and physically separated in parts of my house. I am coming to grips with what is where so I can locate easily when there is a need.

That’s why I went through everything on the desk. To relocate hard copies that should have been filed and were not.

You are right. I have several books of stories and am quite familiar with Giroux.

I do not try to tell everything I know but enough in terms of ideas that it will support everything I know has happened since or is planned or I dealt with on blog.

There is very little duplication between ISC and the book. Except when I went back to manuscript a few more recent ISC posts helped me frame aspects slightly differently so the narrative flowed.

Some of what said hello today after being buried played nicely into continuing to support this clean energy, corporatist, planned economy vision tied to ed.

I thought of you this morning when I was reading a recent OECD doc and it was literally describing how to get schools all over the world on the same transformational paradigm.